


Further Than I Thought

by LamiaCalls



Category: I Found - Amber Run (Music Video)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Kidnapping, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24253228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LamiaCalls/pseuds/LamiaCalls
Summary: Travis made it sound so simple. They get the girl, they leave a note. Hide out for a few days, get the cash. Done deal, no fuss.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9
Collections: Jukebox 2020





	Further Than I Thought

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesunsaid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesunsaid/gifts).



Ben watches her sleep, chest rising and falling. She’s sleeping beside a tree, where he left her. Where Travis told him to leave her.

When he agreed to this -- how long had it been? A week? A lifetime? -- he thought it would be simple. Travis made it sound so simple. They get the girl, they leave a note. Hide out for a few days, get the cash. Done deal, no fuss. They wouldn’t hurt her. And she was just some prissy fucking rich girl, daughter of some lawyer type. Trust fund baby with more money than sense. He hated her, when Travis told him about her. Hated her so damn much.

He watches her lips part as she lets out a small noise, disturbed by something in her dreams. He watches the way she shivers even under the weight of his hoodie. Travis is asleep under the only blanket, so there’s nothing he can do to ease her discomfort.

The clearing is small, full of broken branches and hard-packed mud that makes his back ache. They can’t hear the road from here. Ben never asked how Travis found the spot. Ben doesn’t ask those kind of questions, because Travis doesn’t answer those kind of questions. There was a dead squirrel when they came up here to dump their supplies yesterday. It wasn’t clear what had killed it, but Travis had kicked it out into a clump of weeds like it was nothing remarkable before Ben had had a chance to think. They’d dumped their lights, the blankets, extra ties, a crate of food, water, all of it stolen from some place or another. All of it is scattered about the clearing now. It already looks like they’ve been living there for months. Ben is embarrassed about that, but he isn’t sure why.

Iris Fenton. That’s her name. It became a chant, a mantra, with Travis and him, in the days leading up to it. Iris fucking Fenton. Everything that was wrong with the world. Such a cushy easy life, compared to theirs. Not a worry in the world. Travis would say, we’ll give her something to worry about. Heck, they even told themselves that they were doing her a favour. As long as her daddy paid the money, they’d be teaching her a lesson about the world. Showing that it isn’t all limitless credit cards and posting food on Instagram.

He looks away from her, back at the shitty fire. He’s no good at outdoorsy stuff. He grew up in the city. But he’s done his best. He’s always done his very best, as poor as it might be. Kept his head down in school, read everything he could get his hands on -- not much, but something -- worked himself to the bone to please his father. He had still believed then, that there was a way out. A way out of his father’s path, out of poverty. If he just did well at school, if he just tried hard enough. He’d been wrong, of course. He realises that he’d started to believe it again, when Travis had told him the plan. Thought that this would be their ticket out. He’s still wrong now, of course.

He wants to move her closer to it, but he’d have to wake her. And while she looks peaceful now, he can’t shake the terror he saw in her eyes earlier. Even when he gave her his hoodie, he saw the way her hands shook. The way she looked at him like she was waiting for him to hit her or something. He wonders if she’s ever been hit before. Shit, he wonders a lot of things, about her life before this.

Besides, if she screams, Travis will wake up too, and Ben doesn’t want that. Travis has a hair trigger at the best of the times, but when he’s rudely woken? Yeah, Ben’s not sure what he’d do. His temper has got so much worse lately too, always gets worse when they’re running out of money and so running out of gear and booze.

This was the man who picked Ben up off the street. Who taught him how to survive. Being afraid of him has never been an option.

He looks back at Iris, the way her face twitches, her breath comes out soft.

Maybe it’s okay. Maybe it’s okay to be afraid on her behalf, even if he can’t be for himself.

Dawn is slowly creeping up the horizon, long fingers getting into the cracks of dark blue, day dragging itself into existence. Ben is shivering, the thin cotton of his t-shirt not enough to ward off the cold. The scratches on his arm that she gave him when they took her sting in the early morning air, and his whole body aches. He’s thirsty, too.

Somehow, she still looks fresh and clean, even after the chloroform, even after all the terror. His fingernails are caked in dirt, his t-shirt stained. He’s sure he must look like shit. He’s sure he’s never looked as sweet as she does.

And he should still hate her for that. At least, he should  _ envy _ her for that.

Then why does he want to wrap himself around it and protect it with all his might?

It’s not long before Travis rises, grunting and groaning and bitching and moaning. He spits into the dirt. Ben has to brace himself not to flinch when Travis ambles over to their corner of the clearing. He tells Ben he’s going to go make the call. The demand.

Ben doesn’t say anything, is just very careful not to look at Iris. He knows his face will give him away if he does. Knows that it will be writ too large for even Travis to miss, and that’s saying something. Instead, he just nods, watches Travis lumber through the trees back towards the car they stole for this job.

When he looks down at Iris, he finds she’s staring back at him and he almost forgets to breathe.

There’s terror there still, the way her eyes dart around. But she doesn’t look away. Just holds him steady as if she were the one with all the power. Like she knows she is.

His tongue is thick and stupid. He doesn’t know what to say. Sorry for kidnapping you?

Instead, he gets his knife out and tries not to break his heart against the fact that she flinches.

He pulls her up to standing. She’s warm and light in his arms, and lets herself be moved like a rag doll. But those eyes never break their gaze, watching him carefully. He wonders if this must be what prey feels like, being looked at so nakedly. Being seen right through.

He swallows. Brings his arms up towards him, and, careful not to nip her, cuts the ties. She gasps, freezes up. Then she scrambles backwards, until her back connects loudly with the tree. She wipes her face, pulls the hoodie, his hoodie, around her tightly.

He tells her it’s okay. He isn’t going to hurt her. That…that he doesn’t want to do this anymore. He doesn’t know where the words are coming from. They’re clumsy and crude and don’t mean what he really wants to say. But he has to make do with the words he has.

He tells her that he’ll take care of this. To just hold on, and it’ll be okay. But they need to go quickly.

Her eyes finally break their searing contact with his. She looks past him, above him. And at first he wonders if he’s scared her too much, but then he hears the tell-tale sound of Travis’ ragged breathing. How did he not hear him coming through the woods? How could he have got that distracted?

Travis says he forgot the keys, but then he stops. He sees Iris, pulling that hoodie so close with her loose hands. He sees Ben with the knife and the ties in his hand.

Time pauses. Ben watches it cycle through Travis’ slow morning brain. Ben only has a second to act.

He lunges for Travis moments before Travis works it out, moments before Travis reacts. He pulls Travis down to the ground, pins him. Shouts at Iris to get the bottle.

He doesn’t know if she’ll listen to him. Is scared that he’s about to get himself killed and, worse yet, leave Iris with Travis, alone.

But then she’s beside him, with the bottle in hand. There’s no time for cotton, no time for measuring it out. Instead, Ben unstoppers the bottle and pours it over Travis, until he’s breathed enough of it, until he stops struggling and goes still. The only thing that’s moving is his chest.

Ben scrambles up. Looks at Iris. Her face is set, determined. It scares him. But there’s no time to consider that. He grabs her hand. Pulls her with him.

They begin to run.

She follows him. She follows him through the trees, lets him decide when they should duck and hide and listen and when they should run.

They go all day. And they barely speak. What could they ever talk about? But it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need words from her. What he needs is to rid himself of the guilt of what he’s done, to someone so…to someone like her.

Hell, he knows she’s only following him because she has no other choice. Because he’s the lesser of two evils. Because she’s scared for her life. He knows she’ll turn him in when they get back to civilisation. And he’s okay with that. He has to be okay with that.

When they rest for the night, she lies next to him. He’s surprised. He read about this, once. Stockholm syndrome. But still, he luxuriates in her body heat. In the smell of her hair. In the way she half-murmurs in her sleep.

He’ll take what he can get. It’s more than he deserves.

He wonders what she’ll say to her friends when she gets back to her life. How long it will take for him to be forgotten as some story she tells. He will never be real to her, not in the way she is now, lying next to him.

He falls asleep with her as flesh and blood and shivering warmth in his arms.

He dreams that one day he might feel again as whole as he does now, with a kidnapped girl besides him and his mentor gearing up for vengeance somewhere behind them.

In the morning, they start running again. Ben still isn’t sure exactly where they’re going, but that’s okay for now. As long as he keeps her safe, that’s okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Gammarad for being a fantastic beta!


End file.
